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The Art of
Another personal message from the ol' webworker instead of actual content.
So this happened:
I hope nobody was expecting anything special.
There's no indication in Google stats why pageviews suddenly rose from about a dozen a day, holding steady for the past several years, to this one day at nearly 500. There wasn't any particular page that was getting the hits, but there were 200+ on the main page. I'll see what it looks like the next couple of days. Probably just some kind of data glitch.
I haven't been much of a webworker in the last half year. Got sick. Got out of the groove. Technical difficulties; please stand by. Dog ate my webwork. Chrissy at PoliNation has dubbed me "webslacker." Hmph; deservedly, I suppose. There's lots of stuff heaped up, dating back months, much of which just needs a little polishing and then they could be called webworks. I suppose I should start mining that heap.
Speaking of heaps, one thing I have started doing again for the past month is the Blog Heap o'Links (the world's greatest blog name). News and general stuff, quoted, linked, and with some commentary I'll probably regret later. No embedded videos, no big graphics, just hypertext. Some little icons, just to break it up. 
Oh, yeah, and today is the 19th anniversary of the web debut of Mindful Webworks. Let's look at the ol' Alexa rankings for this site. Hmm. World ranking = 10,706,372, but that's changed by 5,503,036 over the past three months — whether up or down, I'm not sure. Looks like an up-arrow, but the hover text says "declined." Or does declined mean went up in the charts? If I'd known, nineteen years ago, how much trouble this website was going to be... I'd've got started sooner?
The first mindful cartoon webwork posted on the web, adapted from the mini-comic of the same name, with heroic coloring work by young daughter: It's All in Your Mind!
Not that much went up the first year. In February of '97, I initiated a daily one-panel, which lasted for several months. Here's the first sketch, The Clubhouse Front Door. They got better, some of them. The second daily panel attempt, which started in 2012, managed to run for a year. Some good stuff came out of that.
Mostly, it's just been whatever I can throw into the mix. Still lots of stuff, old and new, not online yet. More than is already here. So, I guess I should get busy.
Maybe after a nap.
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a flock of goose is geese,
but more than one house is not hice,
nor a flock of moose known as meese.
You might have a couple of beers,
you might wish a hundred wishes,
but you can't see a couple of deers,
and a hundred fish are not fishes.
Yet if I have two scissors, and I give you one,
each now has scissors. English is fun!
mindful webworker: Erm, heh - bits of it from childhood, inspiration in previous comments, a touch of research on invariant nouns et al., but just baked originally at #177 on AoS.
Insomniac: In that case, I tip my hat to you sir. Very well done.
anon a mouse: Very cool. Of course, you'll be receiving the usual AoS accolades...
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Old computer hardware…
I had the wide-carriage pinfeed-paper attachment, numerous wheels, pica, elite, italics. Different color ribbons.
And the ribbon re-inker. (My accountant had the same, until he spilled a bottle of ink on an expensive oriental carpet, after which he calculated just buying fresh ribbons was more economical. Heh Good times.)
1200 precious 1980 dollars, a real hearty investment even when I was well-off.
Bought fanfold paper by the case. Still have half a case of wide-carriage green-bar fanfold, if anyone needs some.
The one thing I never sprang for was the sound-insulated clamshell box for it. My neighbors didn't complain. But, then, I was the landlord....
Yes, I do still have it in the museum.
Ira Goldklang's TRS-80 Revived Site
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Just one of those one-thing-led-to-another things.
Not to go too far back, let's start with, I was looking at the cast list for It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963).
Just to read the cast list is a slice of culture, a fog of of nostalgia, and a (mad^4) world of memories of a million smiles and laughs they gave us.
I was only (counts on fingers and toe) eleven years old when the film came out. At the time, it was the most hilarious thing I'd ever seen. Come to think of it, it may still be. I never understood "rolling in the aisles" until I did during that movie.
At my age, a lot of those comedians were far more of my parents' generation than of mine, but at age eleven in the 1950s and early 1960s, you still got your parents' culture. And, if you were lucky, your grandparents'. So I knew most of them well enough, some of them less so. Lots of "wow!" of recognition, with much "where do I know him from?"
Down the cast list I came to the fellow who played the hardware store clerk. I remember, at the time, recognizing him. "Where do I...?" Not by name or remembered roles, but just as one of those great characters I know from all over. Didn't he do something with Disney? In IaMMMMW, his was a small part, but I was amused by his having the role, as with so much of the rest of the star-laden cast, major role or cameo.
According to MatineeClassics.com, the mother who saddled him with the given name Winstead Sheffield Glenndenning Dixon Weaver rescued him with the nickname Doodlebug. Weaver started in radio in the late 1930's, developed his famous character Professor Feedelbaum with Spike Jones, In film, his career spanned from an uncredited cowhand role in My American Wife (1936) to a SF comedy Earthbound (1981), and through those decades, besides his many roles, he also created color silent comedy films for television in the 1960s and a spoof on the Beatles' Eleanor Rigby.
To a kid, he was a funny-faced guy who was funny. In his unfortunate real life, I read, after four failed marriages, he took his own life at age 71, in 1983. Born, lived, and died in L.A. So happened that the day I looked him up was the day before his birthday, May 11.
Quote (1972):
I don't miss being a star. I don't miss anything because I live in the now.
Quote (1981):
Nothing means anything when you're in pain. I have a nice house and an income but not a thing to live for.
And as if that wasn't enough of a downer to end on, I discovered on iMDB an entry for It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad MAD World: The Sequel (2015).
Right.
Well, here's what he was all about, a somewhat uneven playlist from YouTube, ending on a Spike Jones bit that doesn't feature Weaver, but I figured I'd include it anyway. "Inspirationally related."
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what I
really want.
But Webster
says these
two lines can't.
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